Sure, we have all heard of a peacock, but did you know that
there are peahens, as well? A cock, of course, is a rooster or
male chicken, and a hen is a female chicken.Cock and hen are
also applied to the names of other domestic birds to distinguish between
sexes.In the case of the peacock,
the name for the male of the species has come to refer, now, to males and
females of the species.The
term peahen is not used very much today; nor is the modern term peafowl.

The
word peacock actually derives from Old English péa
“peacock”, and the –cock (or –hen) was added during
the Middle English period in order to distinguish between males and females,
as mentioned above.The Old
English form comes from Latin pavo “peacock”.The peacock was a native of India, but it was domesticated and then
taken to the West by traders.The
Romans probably took it to Britain, where their name for the bird was
adopted and changed by the Anglo-Saxons.The Latin word is thought to come from Greek taos
“peacock”.

There
have been many different forms of the word in English: pecok, pekok,
pecokk, peacocke, peocock, pyckock, poucock,
pocok, pokok, pokokke, and poocok, among others.By the late 17th century it seems to have taken on its
current form.The earliest example of the word in writing comes from
about 1300: “F[o]ure and
xxti wild ges and a poucok” (“Four and twenty wild geese and a
peacock”). By the
late 14th century Chaucer was using the word to refer to people
who strutted and preened ostentatiously, as the peacock was perceived to do:
“And yet as proud a pekok can he pulle.”Interestingly, the term
“proud as a peacock” is still used to this day.Keats spoke of the peacock in his poem Lamia, from 1812:
“Eyed like a pea~cock, and all crimson barr’d.”George Eliot uses the peacock to refer to a showy person (1866):
“How came he to have such a nice-stepping long-necked peacock for his
daughter?“

When
the Spanish came to the New World and first saw the turkey, the only other
animal that the turkey resembled, to them, was the peacock, so the Spanish
word for turkey is pavo, coming from Latin pavo “peacock”.If you know what a turkey looks like, with its large display of tail
feathers, you can probably understand why the Spanish thought turkeys
resembled peacocks.Peacocks
were also eaten like chicken, and the fact that turkey was also found to be
pretty tasty might have influenced the Spanish term for the turkey.

There
is also an astronomical constellation called Pavo or The Peacock.There are other animals with the word peacock in their names,
as well, such as the peacock fish, so namedbecause of its brilliant coloring of red, blue, green and white; and
the peacock butterfly, which has eye-like spots similar to those on the tail
feather of the peacock.There
is also peacock copper, which is iridescent, showing greens and blues when
moved in the light.

In India, the peacock is treasured as the national bird, and it lives
wild there and in Sri Lanka.The
standard peacock which most of us see in the United States is called an
India blue.There is also a
black shouldered variety, which is similar to the India blue except for, as
you might expect, black shoulders.The
male peacock is about the size of a turkey, with a long train of large
feathers.When trying to
attract a female, the male erects the train of feathers into a huge fan
shape.Females are not as brightly colored as males and do not have
the long train of feathers.It
is thought that the remarkable colors and patterns on the male peacock’s
feathers served as camouflage in the brilliant colors of the tropical
rainforest, where it originated.

There
is a jungle peacock which is found in Burma, Malaysia and Java, and it is
golden-green where the variety from India is blue.White peacocks sometimes turn up in captivity, but they must not
survive long in the wild, as they are not usually seen there.Apparently their white plumage makes them too easily seen by
predators.

You
might be surprised to learn that the peacock is mentioned in the Old
Testament of the Bible and in ancient Greek plays.Since that far back it was appreciated as a beautiful animal and a
display of wealth.The
taxonomical name of the Indian peacock is Pavo cristatus (cristatus=crested),
and the jungle peacock is Pavo muticus (muticus=beardless).

Your
Etymological Queries Answered

From
M.-J. Taylor:

Did
the fowl get named a duck because it ducks its head under water, or the other
way around?

The action preceded the animal name; that is,
people were ducking before the duck got its name. Both words
are thought to derive from the (hypothetical) Old English *ducan "to
dive". That means that duck "water fowl of the genus Anas"
is etymologically "one who ducks". Danish has duc-and
which is literally "dive-duck", and Swedish has dyk-fågel
"dive-fowl". Ducan referring to the bird is first
recorded in the mid-10th century. Duck the verb first surfaces in
Middle English as douke in the mid 14th century, but it is thought to
have existed as long as the Old English ducan.

The
Anglo-Saxons already had a word for duck before they started to call the
bird "the diver". It was ened. This comes from the
Indo-European root aneti-, which gave us Latin anas (as in Anasboscas, the taxonomical name of the domestic
duck) and Danish and "duck" (as in duc-and), among
others.

From Mona:

Today
a friend of mine said her philosophy teacher explained to the class that the
word metaphysics came from the fact that texts that had no exact
category were stored next to the physics books. I, however,
believe that it comes from the Greek word meta "beyond" and
means "beyond physics" or a more spiritual, higher source of
knowledge.

As
simplistic as it may sound, metaphysics actually is related to the
placement of texts, but not just any texts.

In the 1st century A.D., scholars made compilations of
Aristotle's
writings. His essays on how to behave were placed in a single volume
called "Ethics", essays on the function of poetry and drama were
collected together as "Poetics" and so on. The final volume on a
single theme was devoted to the behavior of inanimate objects and was called
"Physics". This still left a considerable number of essays on
assorted topics and these were placed in a final, miscellaneous, volume called
"Metaphysics". This word means "after Physics" and was
chosen simply because it followed the volume called "Physics".
There is nothing in this, the original work of metaphysics, to suggest
transcendence of mundane reality.

There was no initial notion of "these books
transcend the physical", either. That idea was attached to the word later, as
a misinterpretation, with the assumption that the works pertained to that which
was supernatural. Even some Greek writers made that mistake, although such
was rare. This is despite the fact that meta- in Greek does not
mean "beyond" in the sense of "transcending". It,
instead means "with" or "after". It is thought that
the incorrect meaning was perpetuated by Latin scholars of the late Middle Ages
or early Renaissance because meta- and trans- meant basically the
same thing when used in other words. The
earliest English reference to the mistaken meaning of metaphysics occurs
in J. Sanford's translation of Agrippa's De Vanitate Artes from 1569: "Of
the Metaphisickes, that is, thinges supernaturall and the Science of them."

Since
the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the word has acquired a new twist.
Wittgenstein, and the Logical Positivists who followed him, considered a
proposition meaningful only if it it may be tested. Belief in propositions
that may not be tested are therefore derided as "(mere) metaphysics".
Such an untestable proposition is "All humans have immortal souls".

More
recently, bookshops have evolved yet another meaning of metaphysics.
If we are to believe the likes of Barnes and Noble, metaphysics means
anything from tales of U.F.O. abductees to maps of "energy vortexes"
[sic] in the vicinity of Sedona, Arizona.

From Jeff Badger:

I
have been all over the web and can't find the origin of the word limehouse.

To limehouse is to make a fiery
political speech. The term comes to us from England, where soon-to-be
prime minister David Lloyd George made such a speech at Limehouse, a
district of the East-end of London, back in 1909. The Daily Mail was the first
to use the term, four years later: "Mr.
Lloyd George himself again... Limehousing at Carnarvon." By 1937 Eric
Partridge had picked up the word for his Dictionary of Slang, and he
defined it thus: "Limehouse,
to use coarse, abusive language in a speech." It is no longer
considered slang today.

The London district takes
its name from the lime oasts or kilns which used to be situated there. The
earliest reference to it was in 1367 when it was called Le Lymehostes.

From Roberta:

I
was recently on the phone with a man who, upon the completion of our
conversation said, "I'll see ya down the pike." I've heard this
before, however, I really don't have any idea where it comes from. Do you?

Actually, we do know where down
the pike comes from. In this instance, the pike is actually a turnpike.
This phrase is distinctively American and is a shortening of to come down the
pike. That is first recorded in a figurative sense in 1956: "Your
uncle’s the ablest politician to come down the pike in these parts in the last
fifty years."

What is
a turnpike? It's short for turnpike road, or what we might
call a "toll road", so named because turnpikes were erected on
the road so that tolls could be collected. Those early "toll
booths" were called turnpikes, even though they were probably just
gates or turnstiles, because turnpikes were originally used to protect a
road or passage from attack. They were fashioned from pikes, or
long, pointed sticks, with one central pike and many smaller pikes sticking out
of the central axis. Turnpike in that latter sense appears in the
written record in the early 15th century. The same term used to refer to a
"toll gate" first appears in the late 17th century.

From Jay:

What
is the etymology of turn over a new leaf? You have a great web
site!

If you turn the pages of a book, you
are turning leaves. Yes, leaf in that sense means
"page", and soturning over a new leaf is another way of saying
"turning to a new page", or, figuratively, starting anew. Pages
have been referred to as leaves since at least the 10th century, as in
this quote from Baeda's History: "Man
scof Þara boca leaf, Þe of Hibernia coman." You may have noticed
that leaf in Old English looks exactly like it does today. While it
was pronounced differently in Old English, it has retained its form since at
least 825 C.E. It is thought to come from the Old Teutonic root leup-
"to peel, to break off", referring to the habit of deciduous trees to
lose their leaves each autumn. Some other words from that root are lobby,
which was originally a monastic cloister (and, hence, "broken off"
from the rest of society) and aloft. By the way, turn over a new
leaf dates from the late 16th century.

In
some parts of the world, books are still written on actual leaves. In
India, for instance, books are traditionally written on palm leaves which are
held together with a cord. The Sanskrit word for "cord" is sutra,
hence any discourse which has been committed to writing is also called a sutra.

where Barb Dwyer says

wa-LA...!

I recently downloaded some
free software from the internet. The problem with free software is
that, while it is great in principle, you usually get what you pay
for. This particular offering has a help file that reads
"Just point, click, and wa-LA...!"

I was unfamiliar with the
word wala until a few years back when a friend used it.

"What did you just
say?" I asked.

"Wala!" he
repeated.

"Yes," I said,
"but what does it mean?"

"Oh, you know,"
he replied, vaguely, "it's what magicians say."

I must be getting a bit
simple in my advancing years for this took a few minutes to sink
in. After a while it dawned on me that what he meant was voilà,
a French word which means literally "look there" (voi,
"look", imperative singular + là, "there")
and which is pronounced Vwa-la.

The problem is that Vwa is
a foreign phoneme - I can't think of a single English word with a Vwa
sound. When we encounter such outlandish syllables we frequently
do not hear them exactly as they are spoken. Instead, our brains
substitute the closest approximation in our native tongue. The
answer in this case is to give our brains a rest and come to our senses.

Your site is terrific, and I too am (if not a "budding") an amateur
curmudgeon. The version of the extraordinarily annoying "is, is" that I hear all the time is "The thing is, is...". My sister is chronically
afflicted, and I hear it more and more. Thanks for evidence that I am not the only one bothered by it; I've mentioned it to other people who
look at me blankly, not knowing what I'm talking about... no doubt susceptible to infection themselves, poor blighters.

Poor blighters, indeed. (You must have been reading P.G. Wodehouse
recently!) Anyhow, like much bizarre language use and abuse, there's
probably not a great deal we can do about it except cringe and bear it.

We have more on this topic from Betsy Kerr:

As a linguist, I noticed this peculiar construction
["is, is"]
several years ago,
and I've noticed since that it's very widespread, occurring in most people's speech,
though more common with some individuals. It can occur
with many other initial elements such as "the problem",
"the thing", etc. , and though it appears nonsensical, it actually serves a helpful
conversational function. Notice that the first "is" is always accented and carries a higher pitch than what follows. This segments off this
first part, which serves as a signal to the listener that some sort of explanation will follow. (Historically, it most likely is a reduced
form of the same construction beginning with 'what': "what the problem is, is that...".)

We understand your
point about this usage serving a conversational function, but wouldn't it
be easier for speakers to say, "The reason is x, y and
z", stressing reason just as the first is in is, is
that is stressed? Anyhow, we won't harp too long on is, is
that since it is conversational and doesn't tend to appear in formal
writing, at least not that we've seen so far. Thanks for your
comments.

and even more from Kevin:

Don't you think that the annoying construction "the reason is . . . is that"
is simply a way for a radio or TV announcer to buy time while thinking and
not an actual linguistic faux pas. People in the media are coached repeatedly not to use "uh" or other more common methods of slowing down
speech while they think. At the same time, it is difficult to remain completely silent.

The only problem
with that suggestion is, is that (just kidding) we've noticed this
particular usage among interviewees and not interviewers. It is the
latter who would have been coached, as you suggest, to fill time with
something other than "uh" or the equivalent. Ms. Kerr's
suggestion, above, that the misusage derives from "What the problem
is, is that..." seems plausible, notwithstanding the awkward syntax
in THAT construction, as well. Anyone want to diagram that one?

From Dr. Anne Gervasi:

I don't have any of my books with me, but what about the Old
English/Anglo-Saxon elegy: The Dream of the Rood? Does it use dream or
only sleep in the poem? That would seem to be the best extant source
for the word in AS context.

In The Dream of
the Rood, the word swefn is used to mean "to sleep or
dream", and dream is used to refer to "joy,
mirth". The poem begins:

...shall fetch me a way from this fleeting life and bring me then there
where bliss is great, to the happiness of heaven, where the
host of God is brought to the feast, where bliss is endless...

The
translation used above is Kemp Malone's. Some translations may
assume that dream means "dream", and we found a
translation which, for dream on heofonum, gave "the heavenly
dream", but we hold that translation to be incorrect. We invite
comment from more experienced Old English scholars.